Daily ceremony in Greencastle held for victims of school shooting

The flag ceremony is happening each day this week at 5 p.m. in honor of the 20 first-graders and six adults who lost their lives in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last Friday.

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By Colleen Seidel/The Record Herald

Waynesboro Record Herald - Waynesboro, PA

By Colleen Seidel/The Record Herald

Posted Dec. 20, 2012 at 12:30 PM

By Colleen Seidel/The Record Herald

Posted Dec. 20, 2012 at 12:30 PM

GREENCASTLE — There were bowed heads, folded hands and tears.

Roughly 25 people surrounded the flagpole outside Greencastle-Antrim Elementary School Wednesday evening as Boy Scouts from Troop 99 lowered the American flag while a bugler played "Taps" on the hill behind the crowd.

The ceremony is happening each day this week at 5 p.m. in honor of the 20 first-graders and six adults who lost their lives in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last Friday.

For the Boy Scouts, the flag ceremony itself is nothing new.

For the bugler, Todd Kirkwood, it's one more "Taps" in a long repertoire of "Taps" he's played as an honor guard member with the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard.

It's the reason for the ceremony at sunset — meant to coincide with the funerals of the Sandy Hook victims this week — that makes it more poignant and solemn than usual.

Troop 99's Tyler Douglas, an eighth-grader at Greencastle-Antrim Middle School, summed up the feeling in two short sentences.

Kirkwood, whose wife Deena teaches fourth-grade at G-A Elementary and whose two children attend the school, approached Principal Chad Stover with the idea on Monday.

He is a part of an organization called Bugles Across America that offers the playing of "Taps" at military funerals and other ceremonies for free. The organization sent out a request to members nationwide to honor the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting by playing "Taps" at sunset this week, Kirkwood said.

"I was driving into school Monday. Seeing the flag at half staff got me thinking ... 'What better place than our local elementary school?"

After Stover ran the idea by Dr. C. Gregory Hoover, district superintendent, Kirkwood reached out to boys of Troop 99, most of them friends of the family, to help.

"I thought it was a great idea," said Stover, himself a father of two students in Greencastle-Antrim schools.

Present at the ceremony Wednesday were Greencastle police, school administrators and school board members, teachers, parents and students.

"The support shows the type of character this community has," said Stover, who added that it was easy to see similarities between the communities of Newtown and Greencastle.

"I agree that it's a similar town," Kirkwood added. "It could easily have been one of our schools."

"We seem so far away from Connecticut," said Hoover when the short ceremony ended. "But certainly we hope this time together makes us seem much closer."

The ceremony will be held again today at 5 p.m. and Friday. The public is invited to attend.